May 2013
1 post
July 2011
1 post
Dan Reviews Trailers will return soon.
Until then, slake your thirst for done-by-me comedy with The Weekly 101, where I post weekly lists of exactly one hundred and one items in conjunction with Jason Gilbert and Jon Weed of Business Flannel. There’s no better place to get your recommended weekly serving of 101 laughs!
In other news, I’ve been interning at CollegeHumor for the summer and writing a whole lot for them, so...
January 2011
2 posts
I've Started A New Blog
It’s called “I’m Going To Joke You To Death” and it’s where I’m going to be housing my non-trailer review writings and videos and other etceteras. It’s still in its formative stages, but like sea monkeys, it will grow for a little while before I lose total interest in it and let it die from neglect.
Check it out over here.
5 tags
THE BEAVER
Let’s play a game of pretend. You are an actor. You’re a pretty damn good actor. Let’s say your name is Smell Gibson. You’ve made some truly classic movies. When people think Smell Gibson, they think epic scale without reliance on CGI, unforgettable climactic moments, and thunderdomes. You are on top of the world, buddy. But then your career starts to hit snags....
December 2010
1 post
6 tags
I AM NUMBER FOUR
Somebody’s killing aliens all around the world. Why? Why should you even care?, rebuts the trailer for I Am Number Four. You’re not going to find out in the trailer. You probably aren’t going to find out in the movie, either. They did not figure out that part of the script. They probably greenlit this movie on the name alone. I Am Number Four! How cool is that? “Can...
November 2010
2 posts
10 tags
TRON: LEGACY
The original Tron was a movie about a gentleman who got sucked into a magical computer world on account of some kind of computer virus or something. He played this bullshit frisbee game and zipped around on a magical bicycle, all the while making friends with the magical computer elves that make the computer go. Everything was blue, and it hurt my eyes. Thirty or so years later,...
5 tags
UNSTOPPABLE
Unstoppable is nothing like the movie where the bus can’t be stopped, or the movie where the boat can’t be stopped, or the Geto Boys album where they can’t be stopped. It is nothing like that movie where the grizzled older dude just days away from retirement is paired up with a wet-behind-the-ears hotshot rookie who’s gonna give him a heart attack if he doesn’t...
October 2010
2 posts
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JUSTIN BIEBER: NEVER SAY NEVER
“They said it would never happen. They said he would never make it.” Who? Who did? Faceless Media Producing Corporation, you’re the only big faceless entity here. Faceless Media Producing Corporation, do you know that when most people say “they,” they’re either talking about the scientific community or you? Did you know that? But please, Faceless Media Producing...
6 tags
TINY FURNITURE
I am going to catalogue every goddamn last quirky thing in the trailer for Tiny Furniture and you are going to absolutely lose your shit. Brace yourself for the thrill ride of a lifetime (Faster, starring Dwayne Johnson and Billy Bob Thornton, in theaters this Thanksgiving season):
I SAID BRACE YOURSELF. THIS AIN’T NO CHRISTMAS CRUISE.
READY?!
LET’S GET QUIRKY:
The movie is...
July 2010
3 posts
6 tags
DEVIL
Like a solitary wounded African elephant staggering across the savannah, M. Night Shyamalan’s career continues to lumber heedlessly onward, now and again pausing to take a tremendous dump, euphemistically called a “movie,” on the desiccated and dusty ground, before eventually dying unceremoniously in a colossal heap. The latest such enormous turd dropped on the road to the grave is...
6 tags
CHAIN LETTER
You cannot imagine how elated I was the first time chains flashed across the screen in the trailer for Chain Letter. Oh my god, I thought, They think we don’t know what a chain is. Then it turns out that the killer actually kills people using chains, which is even better, because in a movie where a psychopath sends chain letters and then kills people with chains, anything is possible! ...
9 tags
RED
Finally tapping into the coveted “Action Movie-Goers Ages 55-64” demographic is RED, the first movie to fully recognize that the bad-ass old guy is the most bad-ass bad-ass possible. For that matter, I think I am not exaggerating when I say that, by and large, the older the practitioner, the more raw the feat. I dare you to name one thing that’s not raw as hell when done by a dude or...
June 2010
4 posts
16 tags
THE EXPENDABLES
The title screen of The Expendables shows a raven flying away from a crystal skull on top of an attache case. If this doesn’t tell you right off the bat how balls-to-the-wall this movie is, maybe the fact that it features every dang guy who’s ever fired a gun in a movie and had it actually hit another dude would tip you off. We’re talking about a movie where Rambo, John...
9 tags
STEP UP 3D
I learned a lot from the trailer for Step Up Three Dee The Streets. I learned that people dance because dance can change things. I learned that one move can bring people together. I learned that one move can make you believe like there’s something more. I learned that one move can set a whole generation free. I learned that you don’t have to cite any examples to make vast,...
8 tags
BEASTLY
Kyle Hardbody thought he had it all: money, looks, popularity, enormous pictures of his face, a guitar, white. Uh oh, though, because he’s also sort of a dick. Then again, when you go to school with people apparently named Sloan Alberts and Trey Madison, you have to sort of grade on a curve in the douche department.
In his arrogance, Kyle Biceps pisses off Seven of Nine, who curses...
15 tags
THE TWILIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE
The trailer for Eclipse calls itself, in big sparkly letters, “THE MOTION PICTURE PHENOMENON THE WORLD IS WAITING FOR.” I would call it the single most inane bit of cinematic nothingness I’ve ever seen in my whole entire life. Hold on, let me rephrase that: For one minute and thirty nine seconds, it was like my entire sensory world turned to white noise, and then there’s just...
May 2010
20 posts
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CHARLIE ST. CLOUD
Zac “Seriously, I’m Not Gay” Efron is Charlie St. Cloud, winner of the Goldman-Sachs Whitest Name Award 2010. Everything seems to be going right for CSC: He is blindingly attractive. He is a master sailor. He is going to Stanford. Apparently, he’s not rich, since his mom mentions something about pulling an extra shift, but given that he’s going to one of the top schools...
6 tags
HARRY BROWN
I’d like to spend some of the capital I’ve hopefully built up with you, the lovely reader, and attempt to coin a phrase. Harry Brown is a film about Mountain Justice. Michael Caine has had enough. Hooligans and gangs run the streets. Cruel and capricious, they steal, kill, and destroy, all in the name of fun. He and his elderly friends are forced to live in fear. The police...
12 tags
THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT
Annette Benning and Julianne Moore are lesbians. Let that sink in. I’ll wait.
Annette Benning and Julianne Moore are a lesbian couple who have two children through the same sperm donor. Mark Ruffalo is their biological father who’s dating someone he’s apparently getting on sloppy seconds from Dolemite. Daughter Mia Wasikowska gets curious and gives Ruffalo a call. ...
13 tags
KILLERS
Killers stars Katherine Heigl as an attractive, blonde, and slightly manic but single and unfulfilled woman who’s all too acutely aware that her biological clock’s ticking. As if by magic, shockingly attractive man of her dreams Ashton Kutcher comes into the picture while she’s on vacation, and the connection is all but instantaneous.
But all is not as it seems. When...
7 tags
IN MY SLEEP
Blonde Chiseled Jaw Guy is a parasomniac. This means that he can do the following while he’s sleepwalking: “Just about anything,” sleep with his best friend’s girlfriend, murder somebody, smash a camera, pick the lock on handcuffs, drive, wear bright yellow boxer-briefs, party it up in a club, get dirt on his feet, wear what appear to be mylar shorts, and get set up. The trailer...
8 tags
THE BLACK WATERS OF ECHO'S POND
If I had a shred of dignity for every word too many in that title, I would have enough to distribute to the excessively multi-racial cast, the poor things. Even though this trailer ostensibly has a bunch of things I like (black guys with chainsaws, girls making out, wheelbarrows), it has many, many more that I don’t. Let’s list them!
An ancient evil that was buried. Oh no,...
3 tags
SALT
During what seems like an ordinary interrogation, a Russian defector tells tough-as-nails agent Angelina “There Are Serious Lines On My Face All Of A Sudden” Jolie that a Russian agent is going to assassinate the president. Not only that, she is that very agent. Here is the actual dialogue:
RUSSIAN GENTLEMAN: The name of the agent is Evelyn Salt.
A GROTESQUELY LARGE PAIR OF LIPS WITH A...
6 tags
MY GIRLFRIEND'S BOYFRIEND
jesse meets ethan. Ethan’s a little geeky, but luckily he’s the cute kind of geeky where he’s all “aw shucks” and witty and goofy-cute what with his flannel shirts and skinny ties but not super confident, and not the kind of geeky where he watches science fiction or reads comic books or doesn’t wear jeans or is generally socially stunted, because those guys can only...
8 tags
LETTERS FROM GOD
Here are some important things you should know about Letters to God:
Tyler has cancer. Luckily, it’s the kind of cancer that makes you adorable. He doesn’t let it get him down, though, and doesn’t let it get in the way of his hobby: wearing shirts that say “SOCCER” with color-coordinated bandanas.
Tyler has taken to writing letters to the one true God that he gives...
8 tags
THE BOUNTY HUNTER
Hunting down, abducting, verbally abusing, and manhandling your “Ex” [sic], all in the name of bringing her to justice: Best job ever? No, it is a weird and scary juvenile violence fantasy, and not how adults resolve their issues. Also a movie! Keep the fire of liberty burning, Hollywood.
Gerard Butler, whose accent has gone from “Scottish” to “Austrian Cookie Monster,” is a bounty...
10 tags
CHLOE
Julianne Moore is worried that her husband, Liam Neeson, is having an affair. This is reasonable, because come on, we’re talking about Liam Neeson here, you guys. In order to find out whether or not he is, Moore employs the aid of Chloe, a horrific half-fish, half-human creature. If I had a dollar for every inch between her eyes beyond a reasonable distance, I would have several...
16 tags
WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS
Having been cryogenically frozen at the end of Wall Street, Kirk “Michael” Douglas has returned to wreak havok on this new, technologically advanced century with ‘80’s know-how and slick suspenders. As any movie buff would know, this premise is a direct rip-off of Jason X, the one where Jason kills people on a space ship instead of next to a lake.
In this new installation,...
7 tags
THE EXPLODING GIRL
As the result of a secret neo-Soviet experiment, Zoe Kazan is faced with an impossible choice: If she does not kill one person every half-hour, the hydrogen bomb embedded in her chest will detonate. On the run from the law, and with time running out, she must fight to survive while trying desperately to determine the lesser of two evils: the path of action, or the path of inaction.
FOUR STARS...
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THE KARATE KID
Are we so quick to forget the lessons of West Side Story? Blacks and Asians are natural enemies. Struck with Yellow Fever, Will Smith Jr. moves to China and wastes no time in hitting on pre-pubescent Chinese chicks (illegal in the US, encouraged in China), but he quickly learns the terrible truth the politicians have been hiding from us for years: Everyone in China knows karate.
In his...
10 tags
LEAVES OF GRASS
In Adaptation, clean-cut, neurotic Ivy League professor Edward Norton, played by John Cusack, has to reconcile with his estranged pot-growing redneck twin brother Edward Norton, played by either Jeff Bridges or Ben Linus’s dad on Lost. Despite being identical twins, they have significantly different accents, which proves that I don’t really know how identical twins work.
...
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OUR FAMILY WEDDING
Are we so quick to forget the lessons of West Side Story? Latinos and blacks are natural enemies. When they fall in love, their families will inevitably feud, and it will be sassy as hell. YOU KNEW THIS WHEN YOU STARTED DATING, ATTRACTIVE INTERRACIAL COUPLE. YOU MUST HAVE.
This can be exacerbated when one family is made of Carlos Mencia, in his customary role as the consensus-appointed...
10 tags
FROZEN
“TERRIFYING! WILL DO FOR SKIING WHAT JAWS DID FOR SWIMMING” -BRAD MISKA, BLOODY-DISGUSTING.COM
This chunk of unbelievable inanity flashes on the screen right around the point where the trailer switches over from “A FUN DAY AT THE MOUNTAIN” to “OHHH NNNNNNOOOOOO.”
Three white teenagers on a skiing trip get stuck on a chairlift. It’s a skiing movie, so of course they’re...
8 tags
FROM PARIS WITH LOVE
Dirt-stache and Baldofsky are the ultimate odd-couple: Baldofsky fucking loves Pringles…
…but all Dirt-stache wants is some alone time with his vase!
There hasn’t been a pairing this incongruous since In Bruges, Hot Fuzz, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Transporter 3, Bad Boys, Bad Boys II, Lethal Weapon, Lethal Weapon 2, Lethal Weapon 3, Lethal Weapon 4, Live Free or Die Hard,...
10 tags
THE WOLFMAN
Benicio del Toro is the inexplicably hispanic son of an English nobleman. Two thirds of the way through the trailer, he turns into the Beast, from X-Men, which enrages the rest of England, and the hunt is on!
Here’s a thing: his father is obviously also a werewolf. You can tell from the trailer because he’s an asshole, and the majority of assholes are werewolves (this is...
11 tags
REPO MEN
Repo Men is about a guy who does a thing with a partner in a dystopian future who fucks up that thing and then has to fight against his partner and, indeed, the whole of society, for the sake of truth. You may remember this movie as District 9, Equilibrium, the video game Haze, Avatar, Minority Report, Fahrenheit 451, and The Giver.
“Ah,” but you say, “Did The Giver have an Asian woman...
